/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Basically. I'd like to bake some on sunday for eating on christmas eve and christmas day. I am hoping to get loaves which are less sour and plan the process now so I can accommodate.

I could feed my starter on saturday morning. Make the dough using the 'lots of starter' method in the evening. Let it raise about 3-4 hours then refrigerate it, then prove it over the course of sunday and then bake in the evening?

Or I could feed it saturday night, make the bread sunday morning, bake sunday night.

Or I could use the less starter method and make a sponge on saturday night, leave it out overnight, make the bread and develop it over sunday and bake sunday evening. Using less starter might actually make less sour bread.

Anyway, enjoy a picture of one of the loaves. I can see how they basically don't rise up very well without some kind of mould to shape them in so I can see why people raise them in containers. If you just drop it on a tray and cover it, it spreads instead of coming up. Next batch I'll raise in a round dish lined with a floured towel so hopefully I can get it out in some kind of taller shape.

This is a smaller loaf I made, I was trying to shape like a baguette but you can see where it has spread out and lost the height for a round baguette.

Most baguette recipes call for something to use as a mould for sourdough I tried to do it without one. I guess this is why.

Some recipes call for a little yeast. This seems wrong because the yeast culture will dominate the sourdough culture correct?

I make quite a bit of sourdough bread. Two weeks is probably a little short in terms of starter maturation, and it's likely that you'll experience better leavening performance after a couple more weeks of twice-daily feedings.

Sourdough, in general, is a patient-man's game. Because commercial yeast is specifically selected for it's leavening power, it rises much more consistently and powerfully than sourdough, to be sure. I've found that fermentation and proofing temperature is fundamental in rising time. I can ferment at room temp and it will take a dough that is made with 30% starter by weight approximately 6-8 hours to finish. If I do it at 78-82F with humidity, then it takes 2-3 hours. You can try bulk fermenting and proofing in a microwave after blasting a container of water for a few minutes, and I can almost guarantee you will be amazed at how much it changes things. With that said, a faster ferment or proofing period generally means less sour flavor, so it's a balance, to be sure.

Your bread looks nice.

Pic is a 30% dark rye sourdough from a couple months back.

>>4088127
Do you know how to keep surface tension on the dough when you're kneading it?

Also, from the coloration of your bread it looks like you have something in your starter besides yeast. Maybe let the starter cultivate longer, to kill off all the unwanted flora, or feed it up more regularly. If that doesn't work, change the ratio of water/flour you feed it.

You also want to feed your starter ~1 hour before you mix the dough.

>>4088148
Thanks for the comments. I've only been feeding my starter daily. Two weeks did seem short but apparently was acceptable as long as it was doubling in volume roughly every 12 hours.

The instructions I got did only say feed daily, discard 50%, make back up with flour and water, little heavier on the flour but roughly 1:1.

The starter was most definitely developing up to day 6 or so. Past then it seems to maintain a pretty standard smell and overall look.

>>4088153
I don't know what you mean by keep surface tension. I usually stand mix my dough for 10 minutes then hand knead for another 10 until satisfied. About having 'something other than yeast' I was under the impression that with sourdough I also wanted a lactic acid bacteria in symbiosis with the yeast. From colour, I'm not sure, the camera isn't great to start with. Also I heard that feeding about 8 hours before you mix is best, I'm guessing that is because when it is at it's peak of activity based on a daily feed, and then you add it to even more food. If I was doing it 1 hour prior, why even do a feed? because I'm discarding 50% of the culture and making up lots of fresh.

>>4088148
From what you say regarding proving times I've got to suspect my culture isn't heavy on yeast. My dough spread, didn't rise high like you delicious looking bread in the picture and took all day in a decently warm kitchen to get there. 6-8 hours at room temperature seems unreal. I'm considering overnight for a first raise, knock back and 5-6 hours for a prove before baking. Not total.

>>4088167

In general, I start starters from scratch using a 1:1 mix of rye flour and water. Rye flour and whole wheat flour seem to have more bacteria/yeast in them (which makes sense, since they include the bran where bacteria would likely live), and therefore get things moving at a more rapid rate. If you want a white starter, than you can start feeding white flour after the starter has fully matured on rye/whole wheat. Your starter should probably be doubling reliably in 3-5 hours before you start using it to bake. This means twice daily feedings should be required if you're keeping the starter at room temperature.

In my experience, you can't diagnose starter issues from loaf color, only from performance of the leavener during bulk ferment, proof, and/or bake.

In terms of getting the starter ready for use, you should always feed it to get it up to volume, then weight for it to just under double. The goal is to make sure that the density of bacteria and yeast is high in the starter, but that they haven't started to die of malnutrition yet. In microbiological terms, you want to catch the starter during log phase, and not during stationary or death phases.

>>4088172

Jesus that post is full of spelling errors. I can't believe I used "than" rather than "then", and "weight" rather than "wait". That's embarrassing. Please forgive me for that. I just woke up and haven't had my coffee yet.

>>4088172
Ok - so can I borrow your brain to assist with my planning? I want some bread for Christmas eve for oils, vinegar, sliced cured meat, wine and general garlic breath. I work in the day and will travel in the evening so I really need to make the bread on Sunday evening.

My plan is to feed my starter on saturday morning. Then saturday night approx 12 hours later..

Take 600ml starter to 1000g flour to 400-500ml water and 15g salt. Mix up and knead for 30 minutes. Raise in my airing cupboard for 12 hours.

Sunday morning I'll quick knead the bread and shape into two loaves using cloth lined bowls. Then about 12 hours later I intend to cook in preheated, oatmeal lined cast iron casseroles.

Then I'll leave them to cool, keep them in brown paper and eat them the next night.

This is based on previous starter performance. I could start feeding twice a day now and see if that gets it more vigorous for sunday and then just start sunday morning?

>>4088180

Why are you measuring your starter volumetrically?

Try this:
100% flour
92% starter
65% water
3.5% salt

Measure everything by weight.

>>4088190
I say 600ml starter but I'm lazy and would basically leave the scale on grams and assume 1ml/1g. So I'd end up with, like my last attempts.

100% flour
60% starter
50% water
1.5% salt

basically you are asking me to use a whole bunch more starter (this might be why your dough is more lively) and a whole bunch more water (I would have problems hand kneading this and would show concerns over structure, maybe your starter is thicker, more sponge like compared to my 1:1?)

Also dat sodium. Does this not retard the yeast growth?

>>4088205

For regular sourdough breads, it has been my experience that 30% starter and 2% salt, by weight in the final dough, produces the most consistent product. I think that's fairly well supported by other bread bakers, too.

Doing some quick calculations, assuming 100% = 100 oz:

100+92+65+3.5 = 260.5 total ounces of dough
92/260.5 = 35.3%
3.5/260.5 = 1.3%

So it's not dead on 30% and 2%, but it's pretty close.

The hydration is a little more complicated, since half of the starter is water, so of the 260.5 total ounces of dough, total water is 65 + .5*(92), which is 111 ounces, while total flour is 100 + .5*(92), which is 146 ounces. Therefore, ignoring the salt, the dough is 76% hydrated.

Yes, that is high, but I tend to prefer high hydration doughs in terms of crust and crumb. If you don't have experience with them, then they will be a pain in the ass, so you might want to back off on the water content. With that said, lower hydration takes longer to ferment/proof.

>>4088228
I might try it as you've said. My starter leans a little towards being slightly heavier in flour due to my preference when measuring out feeds. So i'll likely end up with something wetter than usual but I'll still be able to work with it, especially with a stand mixer. I can always work a little more flour in when kneading if I need to.

I'll also start feeding the starter twice a day. Current routine is discard half by weight add back weight in flour and water 1:1 by weight.

Also, I'm feeding wholemeal flour, using regular white to bake. I figure that with a 92% starter at 50% flour I'm ending up with about 3:1 plain to wholemeal which isn't a bad mixture for a final loaf.

>>4088228
Also my starter is looking pretty lively. I've just fed it for the second time today so maybe twice daily feedings will be the way forward. It usually smells a mixture of yeast, sweet, fruity and nice but actually, right now it smells delicious, much nicer than it did before I fed it this morning. I think that basically it gets fed, is happy for 12 hours, is unhappy for 12 hours, then gets fed. Twice daily feedings should keep it in this state.

Also, how much do you keep on hand? I suppose that I'm only ever a day away from having a 1000g of the stuff assuming I keep 250g at a time and that isn't too weird to keep fed. I've got about 600ml at the moment which seems wasteful.

Do you ever bake using the method I touched upon? Using about a tablespoon of starter to make a sponge and then using that to make dough the next day?

bumping with what another attempt looks like inside. it takes delicious, but by god, is it chewy.

Sourdough bump!